Smart, young migrants drive Portland's 'astonishing' economic growth

Many of Gabrielle Blackwell's classmates at the University of Chicago found work in insurance, or accounting, or finance. They're making tons of money, she said, but working impossible hours and "hate their lives."

Blackwell chose a markedly different route and headed west, to Portland, leaving behind friends, family and professional connections for a fresh start in a city where she could set out independently.

"What I wanted to do, growing up in general, was create a name for myself, a brand for myself," she said.

Four months after moving here in 2016, she was downsized out of a job at a marketing technology company. But she decided to stick around and landed at the cloud computing startup Cloudability, where she was quickly promoted to a management role. She now leads a five-person sales and business development team.

A new analysis of Portland's economic growth over the past decade shows that young, highly educated migrants like Blackwell are transforming the regional economy. Though Portland lacks large anchor employers and major research universities that other cities boast, the metro area's economy has outperformed nearly every other large city over the past decade by a number of key metrics.

Portland doesn't have as many professional options as Chicago, Blackwell said, nor as much culture and diversity. But it offers something else – a place where people can chart their own path, one built on ideas and individuals rather than institutions.

"I've never been in a place (before) where I felt like I could create my own environment," she said.

"We knew we're doing better. We knew we're outperforming. I just didn't realize how large of a transformation is occurring," Lehner said. "It was surprising to me just how good some of these numbers were."

The new data show the Portland area's median annual income has soared 8.7 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $68,700 since 2007, the beginning of the Great Recession. That's the fourth-largest gain in the nation.

In the same period, the number of high-wage jobs (occupations that typically pay a median wage of at least $60,000 annually) in the metro area grew by more than a third, the fifth-fastest gain among the nation's large cities.

Portland stands out not just for its rate of economic growth but for the fact that it happened without the educational or corporate headquarters that propel other strong metro economies, and without a corresponding increase in the level of entrepreneurship. Lehner said Portland is demonstrating that geography and culture can produce similar results by drawing skilled workers from elsewhere.

"You just get a bunch of smart people together and they'll figure something out. They'll find a way to fill a niche," he said. "I think the magic sauce is the quality of place, the draw. We're just getting smart, skilled young folks moving here and they make it work."

Economists have known for years that Portland was enjoying unusually strong growth. But they're startled nonetheless to see the census numbers that show just how good it has been.

"The surprise is the strength. The direction is not a surprise," said Tom Potiowsky, director of the Northwest Economic Research Center at Portland State University, who reviewed Lehner's findings.

The gains are broad based, affecting all economic and demographic groups. But they're not equally distributed.

Though poverty rates in Portland have fallen steadily over the past five years, they remain roughly 10 percentage points higher for racial and ethnic minorities, at nearly 20 percent.

And while Oregon's unemployment rate is near an all-time low and workers are returning to the job market in significant numbers, it's the high-wage and low-wage occupations that are growing fastest. Middle-income jobs remain below their pre-recession levels.

As the state's economy transforms to one increasingly focused on the highly educated, Potiowsky said, some people are being left behind.

"People may be out of a job and there's a skills mismatch in job openings," he said.

Meanwhile, an uptick in migration and growth in wages have fueled a dramatic rise in housing costs. In Lehner's analysis, he finds affordable housing to be the region's biggest long-run challenge, one that could eventually stall Portland's growth.

Portland's economy has always been especially cyclical, according to Lehner, owing to its dependence on manufacturing and migration. Both rise and fall considerably based on underlying economic conditions.

The current economic cycle is slower than most recoveries, but also considerably longer. Lehner said that's worked to Portland's advantage.

"When you're more boom-bust, whether you come out ahead over the entire business cycle is largely about how long the expansion lasts," he said.

The economic growth Portland has enjoyed over the past several years masks some of the challenges that await the region, according to John Tapogna, president of the Portland economic research firm ECONorthwest.

For example, he said, Portland lacks the large corporate headquarters that train new generations of entrepreneurs and executives and produce extreme wealth that helps fill public tax coffers. And with the region's tech industry stalled, there's no indication that new companies are forming to fill that gap.

Meanwhile, Tapogna said the growth Portland has enjoyed has created problems in transportation and housing the region has yet to address. The good news is that with economic growth, Portland has the resources to begin figuring them out.

"We have found a model for growth and one that is doing a nice job with median income and is helping bring poverty down, and that is great," Tapogna said. "More than most regions, we get to decide where we're going with this."